It was Muriel Benson. For weeks she had been a prisoner in the lamasery, cloistered in a suite of well-furnished rooms and waited on by a close-cropped nun. She had been surprised in the bungalow and overpowered by three of the Chinamen before she realised her danger or could seize a weapon with which to defend herself. Had she been able to snatch up a revolver she would have made a desperate fight for freedom. But with fettered hands, a helpless captive, she had been carried away on a mule. From the first she had recognised the pock-marked, one-eyed leader of the gang as the _Amban's_ officer, and so had known who was the author and cause of her abduction. For days she had been borne along up the rough track over the mountains, through narrow, high-walled passes, down deep valleys and across rushing torrents, closely guarded but always treated with respect. Her captors used broken Tibetan and Bhutanese when they desired to communicate with her, but they answered none of her questions. She had dreaded reaching their destination, where she expected to find Yuan Shi Hung awaiting her; and once, in fear of it, she had tried to throw herself down a precipice along the brink of which the path ran. After that she had been roped to a big, powerful Manchu. On her arrival at the monastery she learned from her garrulous nun-attendant that the _Amban_ had been summoned to Pekin, where a revolution had taken place and his friends there hoped to make him President, which he regarded as a step towards the Imperial throne. The monks of the monastery were his faithful allies on account of his relationship to the powerful Abbott of the Yellow Lama Temple in the Chinese capital. They had agreed to guard his prisoner, if his men succeeded in capturing her, until he returned or sent for her. At first the girl, relieved of the dread of falling at once into his hands, lived in the hope of a speedy rescue. It was unfortunate, she thought, that Colonel Dermot, with his extraordinary knowledge of and influence over the Bhutanese, had left India. But even without him the power of the British Empire would be set at once in motion to avenge this outrage on an Englishwoman. Dermot's understudy, the Assistant Political Officer, faithless lover though he was, would do all he could to save her. Assuredly she would not have long to wait.